Limits
by MoreThanJustCoffee
Summary: The news they've been dreading has arrived. Found outside a warehouse in Midtown is the corpse of a girl who looks just like Alexis, missing now for 12 hours. But when Castle pleads Beckett to take him to the crime scene with her, their relationship splinters. (One shot; scene and a half. Read the intro!)


_I wrote this scene and a half over a year ago, well before Pandora/Linchpin and a good half-season before Always. I had never intended on publishing it (read after the scene for an explanation), but since "Target" comes out in a week with the same general plot point (Alexis being kidnapped), I decided I'd stick it up and avoid a "foul" call._

_Continuity wise, it_ was _ intended that Castle and Beckett would be together when I wrote this and that Alexis would be in college. Enjoy and share!_

* * *

The mug shattered as it hit the break room floor.

"You can't do this!" he roared.

"The hell I can't, Castle! You're not a cop. You're a writer and there's no reason I have to take you."

Castle's eyes burned with fury, "Not a cop? You're pulling _that_? I thought I was your partner!"

Beckett's stomach rolled.

_Partner._

She clenched her jaw and held his gaze. It bore into her like a knife. He was fuming. She could see it in his face, in his eyes. He hated her for calling him a writer, for denying their relationship, for taking a thousand steps back.

_Partner. _

One word, one small, simple word. Yet like so many other small things, it defined them.

_Partner._

Beckett spoke slowly and deliberately. She kept her eyes firmly fixed on his, silently begging him to see the truth of her next words.

"Partners look after each other. Partners keep each other from getting hurt. That's all I'm doing Castle. If you go to this scene - if you see this - it will eat you alive. You will never rest. You will never have peace. You will be broken for the rest of your life".

She expected him to keep arguing, to yell at her that it didn't matter.

But whether it was because of the look on her face or the reality of her words, the fury drained from Castle's eyes. They filled instead with dread, sorrow, and paralyzing fear. He collapsed into the chair behind him, burying his face in his hands.

For a minute, or maybe a lifetime, there was only silence. She watched him through laden lashes, the physical and emotional exhaustion from them both permeating the room. Absently she noticed the scar on her chest burning slightly, and she focused on it, willing it to burn away the pain in her heart.

Then Castle looked up at her and spoke with a voice that broke every wall she'd ever had.

"Kate", he pleaded, "Please. She's my daughter. If...if you ever loved me - if anything between us was ever real - please. Take me to see her. I...I don't care what it's like."

_I don't care what it's like. _

Maybe he didn't - but she did. She'd seen it before, countless times. She'd seen the strongest of men and the bravest of women fall into darkness after seeing a dead loved one. It wasn't something that could be unseen. Even she, all these years later, still had nightmares about that alleyway.

And despite all Castle's strength and all his resolve, she knew it would destroy him.

She knew she could never forgive herself for letting him go through that.

There was no option.

"I'm doing this _because _I love you."

Then she blinked once, long and still. When she opened her eyes, Kate, the woman he loved and who loved him, was gone. Before him now stood Detective Beckett, and it was she who spoke the dreaded words.

"You're not coming."

She turned away as fast as she dared, but not before she saw his look of shock and anguish. Deliberately avoiding looking at the espresso machine, Beckett stepped out of the room.

"Officer Parks," she said, addressing a nearby uniform who had been discreetly trying to hide that he had been listening in. Beckett didn't fail to notice that the rest if the precinct was actively busying themselves. She ignored them.

"Mr. Castle is not to leave this building under any circumstances until you receive a call from me. Is that understood?"

Parks nodded solemnly. He didn't need to ask the reason. The entire building had heard.

Beckett bit her inner lip and turned back towards her other half.

Castle was still staring at her, his face full of emotions, his eyes filled with tears.

She'd never seen him cry before. Even though all that had happened in the past 12 hours, he had not once broken down.

Until now.

It was this release of emotion that nearly sent her over the edge. Before her stood a different man, one altogether incomparable with the one who just last week had made her a cup of coffee in this exact room.

"Wait for my call," she said. It was all she could manage.

Kate wanted nothing more than to gather him in her arms and tell him she was sorry. She wanted to hold him, to be there for him, to tell him it would all be alright. As Kate, that was her job.

But as Detective Beckett, her job rested with the unidentified corpse of a late teens, long haired redhead in Midtown that was almost certainly the missing daughter of the only man she had truly ever loved.

Shaking, she began to turn away.

Then Castle spoke with a tone so dark, so pained, and so horrid that she knew it would haunt her though all her years.

"I'll never forgive you for this."

The finality of his words stunned her.

"If it saves you this pain," Kate whispered, her voice equally hurt yet equally final, "I can live with that."

And without another word, Detective Beckett turned and strode strode from the room, leaving behind no more than shattered ceramic and a broken future.

Always, it seemed, had its limits.

* * *

She had no clear recollection of how she managed to arrive at the crime scene or how long it took her to cross the yellow tape.

They all stared at her, the uniforms, the spectators, the press.

The were all waiting. Wondering.

When she got the body, Lanie hadn't rolled it over. Her stricken face said it all, "I was waiting for you." Ryan and Esposito looked at her the same way. This was a family affair.

None asked why Castle wasn't there. Either someone from the precinct had warned them or they assumed.

They had waited for her. And now the time had come.

Kate nodded once and Lanie rolled over the girl.

Kate's heart leapt into her throat and Lanie audibly gasped.

The girl in front of them, the dead body, the bane of their nightmares, wasn't Alexis.

It was close, close enough to set off all the triggers in the NYPD, but it wasn't Alexis.

Never had Katherine Beckett been so happy to see a corpse.

She grabbed her phone faster than she could have imagined and called Castle. She waited for 3 agonizing tones before he answered. She didn't even wait for him to speak before she began,

"Castle, it's not her. It's not Alexis."

Silence greeted her.

"Rick? Are you there? I know it's not good news, I know I haven't found her, but she's not dead. That's something."  
Silence.

"Rick, please. Say something. I...I promise I'll find her."

A voice on the other end laughed at her. A cold, malevolent laugh. A laugh that didn't belong to the man she loved, "No you won't."

And the line went dead.

* * *

_What happens next I've never written down. In fact, I rarely write ANYTHING down. This was just one of the few scenes that made it to paper. _

_As with most of my fiction, there really IS a relatively complete storyline that coincides with each scene I write down. __ Yet this scene has the unique perspective in that the tv series (with the season 5 two parter) will actually _create _this scenario...and since I have much more faith in Marlowe than most, I have no doubt they'll give us an excellent story._ (there are actually some other really fantastic scenes I had planned for before this particular one shot, but I'll splice those onto other stories...though frankly, they really only work with a kidnapping plot...maybe I WILL finish it out at some point).

_BUT - in case you were wondering:  
Officer Parks is actually working for an as yet unidentified bad guy__. Parks feings that Beckett calls him and he tricks Castle into a car which will "take you to your daughter". One of those lines that's true - but not how you'd expect. __By the time Beckett calls Castle's phone, he's drugged in the back of some black towncar on the way to God knows where with the unidentified villain playing phone games with Beckett. The team pieces together the deception though surveillance videos, and ultimately Beckett is led (thought far to obvious clues) to where the bad guys are. _

_______That's kind of where I got stuck. Ultimately, the reason I chose not to pursue this particular one is that I couldn't come up with a good enough villain with good enough motive to kidnap not only Alexis, but Castle as well. My most concrete theory was a game of retaliation and vengeance actually centered towards hurting Beckett and Castle (the idea was that an old case comes back to bite them...but then I saw an episode of The Mentalist which did that...so that idea flew out the window). _

_______Again, I'm hoping and expecting that Marlowe impresses with his Target and Hunt storyline.  
_

_______So there's that! A scene and a brainstorm, all in one document. How very entertaining!_


End file.
